


show me where it hurts

by buru



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Family Feels, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Tim Drake, Tim Drake-centric, Time Loop, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Unreliable Narrator, i have no idea where that one came from, minimal comfort if i'm being honest, tim tries at least
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:47:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28224855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buru/pseuds/buru
Summary: [Tim couldn't seem to draw his eyes away from the ones reflected back at him in the glass, eyes that had been familiar once, maybe four years ago or so, wide and blue and panicked.It was his own face that Tim was looking at, but one he had long since grown out of.What the hell had happened?]Or, Tim is thrown back in time and decides to change things for the better, starting with Jason. It doesn’t work like he expects it to.
Relationships: Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Everyone, Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Comments: 41
Kudos: 269





	1. chapter one

For a long while, there was only pain. 

It was all encompassing, all consuming. Tim had been shot at and stabbed, bloodied and bruised and broken in every way imaginable. Pain went hand and hand with being Robin, and then Red Robin, and was a constant companion after his years as a vigilante. 

Needless to say, he was not unfamiliar with pain. But compared to this, what he felt now, Tim had never even been hurt before. 

It was liquid fire burning in his veins, lapping like a thirsty dog at his skin, flaying the flesh from his bones and rubbing salt in the gaping wounds left in its wake. Even just existing seemed to hurt, grating against every sense and then some. The pounding of his heart and the rasp of his breath was nothing short of unbearable.

Pain like what Tim was feeling was ever unfolding, unfurling like a blossom in spring. It was being unmade over and over again, torn apart and shoddily pieced together, broken and mended a thousand times over. 

Tim couldn’t tell how long it lasted, couldn’t even manage the barest hint of a thought past the overwhelming feeling. It could have been seconds or minutes or hours and he would have been none the wiser, wouldn’t have ever known the difference. 

But then it stopped, and Tim was left gasping and shuddering on the ground, trembling with the aftershock of such a visceral feeling. Phantom pain still wracked his body, sapped him of any remaining strength he might have had. 

Each breath was wet and tasted of blood, throat raw from screams Tim hadn’t even been aware had escaped his mouth. His muscles spasmed like the limbs of a spider half-crushed underfoot, jerking and twitching uncontrollably. 

Somehow, even the lack of pain hurt, the lingering ache just as bad. 

For a long time, Tim lay there, breathing. It seemed that no matter what happened, Tim would always be left there, alone, unable to die. He was suddenly reminded of his time with the League, with Pru, of the stab wound that had rid him of his spleen. 

But it didn’t matter. The trail of thought slipped through Tim's fingers as a wave of pure exhaustion overtook him as easily as the pain had, chipping away at any defenses he might have normally had against it. And when unconsciousness did finally come for him, it was sudden and whole, the greatest relief Tim had ever felt. 

Lucidity, on the other hand, returned to Tim with a vengeance. His head pounded and his skin felt hot and tight. 

For a moment, Tim just laid there, eyes scrunched shut tightly, limbs held still with an odd sort of tension. He didn’t want to open his eyes to see what he would find, content to let himself linger in that in-between state of existence for just a little while longer. 

But as Tim lay there, he realized two things: he knew where he was, but he didn’t know why. 

He didn’t even have to open his eyes to know that he was in his childhood bedroom. It had a particular scent and a similar gaping hollowness to it as the rest of the house, a feeling that Tim had never been able to quite forget even after he had long since moved out. 

Tim had moved—he shouldn’t be there.

He still owned the place, of course, but he didn’t like to visit much. Even when his parents had lived, their presences were more ghosts that haunted the place than actual living figures. In death, their memory lingered tenfold. He hadn’t been there in months, never stayed longer than the few minutes it took to get the few odd belongings he had left behind. 

When the realization came, Tim sat up with a start, inwardly wincing at the ache the sudden movement caused. 

As he had thought, Tim was in his old bedroom. He was on the floor, cheek no doubt imprinted with lines from the stiff carpet beneath him. Quickly, he scanned his surroundings, drinking in any prevalent details he could glean from them. 

It was dark, both inside and out, the only light the soft silver moonbeams that trickled in through the half parted curtains above the windows in Tim's room. The sheets on his bed were askew but seemingly unslept in, the monitors on his desk were dark, and he could see the outlines of the boxes that held his photographs from under his bed. 

It looked exactly the same as it had when Tim was thirteen, and that wasn’t right, was it? Tim wasn’t thirteen anymore. Unease flickered to life like a match being struck. 

Only after Tim confirmed his location did he cast his memory as far back as it could go, searching and grasping at a reason as to why he was there in the first place. It was like there was a hole in his head where the answer should be, a pit Tim could only tiptoe around, aware of its existence only in the fact that it had none. 

The last thing he could remember was going to sleep one night, then nothing more. 

His head still felt heavy, pulsing with a headache behind his eyes. Hope wouldn’t do much for him in this situation, but he couldn’t help hoping his memory would return after the pain had fully passed. It was almost worse than the pain earlier, the unknowing of it all. 

It was as Tim lifted his hands to rub at his temples that he noticed a third thing: those weren’t his hands. They were the soft, unblemished hands of a child. Tim hadn’t had hands like that since he hit puberty. His own hands were hard and calloused and scarred. 

The spark of unease fanned into the flames of fear. Fear he kept hidden under the thin veneer of cool control, but fear regardless. 

Tim forced himself to his feet, legs shaking under his own weight. Now that he looked down at himself, he could see that none of his body was right. It was all too small, too fragile. It was the body of someone that had never seen hardship, soft and weak and unmarked. 

With a quickness that belied his false sense of calm, Tim threw open his curtains. The wide windows overlooked the dark, broken toothed skyline of Gotham, skyscrapers just slightly different than they had been the last time Tim saw them. 

But that wasn’t what he was really looking at. 

Tim couldn't seem to draw his eyes away from the ones reflected back at him in the glass, eyes that had been familiar once, maybe four years ago or so, wide and blue and panicked. 

It was his own face that Tim was looking at, but one he had long since grown out of.

What the hell had happened?

Explanation after explanation presented itself to Tim, but with no recent memory, there was no way to tell. Time travel. Dimension travel. Some sort of temporal displacement. De-aging, maybe. He didn’t know, had not even the slightest hint of a clue. And that wasn’t something Tim was used to. 

Tim took a deep breath in, then out, boxing up any panic and confusion and forcibly shoving it to the back of his mind to process later. 

He was a detective; he needed to look at the facts: he was in his old house, he looked thirteen years old, Gotham seemed to have regained a few years on its infrastructure, and he had no memory of how any of those things had happened. 

Okay, then. Tim took in another deep breath, hands balled into fists at his sides, nails digging into the flesh of his palms. He released the intake of air, released his clenched hands. Okay.

First things first, Tim needed a plan of action, and for that, he needed more knowledge. For now, time travel seemed like his best bet, but he could never be certain. 

He tore his gaze away from his reflection and moved away from the window on coltish limbs, aching fiercely. He was unused to the new—old?—lightness of his body, a few inches shorter, a good many pounds lighter, without any muscle mass, and unburdened by any of his usual pains or exhaustion. How had he ever gotten around in a body so light and fragile, more porcelain glass than flesh and bone?

The clock in the corner of the room was unclear, and the calendar just beside it equally unreadable. 

It wasn’t ideal, but Tim would manage. He was already in for a long night, a quick search for the exact date wouldn’t hinder him. Before anything though, he would need fortification. 

Energy drinks would be good, caffeine pills better, but Tim knew he wouldn’t have any at thirteen. He already missed the massive stash he kept hidden from Alfred in his room. Coffee would do just as well, but it meant leaving his room, which was something Tim had never enjoyed. A necessary evil, he supposed. 

He lingered for a long moment in the doorway of his childhood bedroom before leaving. It was strange, what this place did and continued to do to him. Unexpected. He had never thought he’d had any attachment to his old house, the one he’d lived in before moving next door to Wayne Manor with his father, but apparently not. 

Then again, it had been the same with his parents. He had spent so long as a kid thinking that he didn’t need his mother and father up until they were both gone and he realized there was a difference between them being absent and them being dead. 

His parents. The thought of them nearly bowled him over. If he really was in the past, Tim could see them, alive and whole. Maybe he could make them stay that way. It would help to prove things too—dead people still wouldn’t be there if he had been de-aged, but temporal displacement was a whole other story. 

The rest of the house was as dark as his room had been and illuminated only by moonlight, but Tim was able to navigate the halls as if he’d never left. 

As he continued to the other side of the house where his parents’ room was, inexplicably, Tim found himself running. His legs buckled with every step, socked feet nearly slipping out from under him as he took the corners, but his hopes were too high to let anything stop him, least of all his own weakness. 

But, Tim thought as he skidded to a halt, he should have known better than that. He did know better. 

Jack and Janet's room was empty. Of course it would be empty. They would have heard him screaming, otherwise. It was as still and dusty as it always was, even before they both died, before they moved out. For as long as Tim could remember, his parents’ room had been unlived in. 

This proved nothing, Tim told himself. His parents’ room being empty was hardly a rare occurrence. He would still have to do some research, see if he could find out what happened. Sharp disappointment dug into Tim's chest, but he purged himself of the feeling before it could take hold. It had always been a familiar feeling, and getting rid of it was easier than breathing. 

He had better things to do than sit around and feel sorry for himself. 

The rest of the house was similarly empty. Jack and Janet must have been gone for a while, as the only signs of any life were the ones of Tim. 

He didn’t bother with turning on any lights. It felt odd to do so, to even make a noise as he snuck down the stairs. It was not as easy as it had once been to Tim, not like it had as Robin. The knowledge came as readily as it always had—it was getting his body to cooperate that was difficult. 

Another point towards time travel, Tim noted. And another point that made him wonder why he could remember that, but not how he ended up in the situation he was in now. 

By the time Tim brewed a pot of coffee, he had made the decision to simply bring the whole machine back up to his room. It was already a mess in there, one more thing would hardly be noticeable. It wasn’t like there was anyone around to tell him not to. 

Besides, if the dread that slowly built up inside Tim was to be trusted, he would definitely be needing a lot of coffee. 

Like most times, Tim was, unfortunately, proven correct. 

The sun rose by the time he felt he was well informed enough to decide what to do next. Despite the new information though, Tim couldn’t get rid of the uneasy feelings the whole situation stirred up. 

First thing Tim did after logging into his computer—a process that had been complicated by the fact that he had forgotten the password—was look up the date. That alone was enough to send Tim into another spiral because it was two weeks before Jason died. Or two weeks until Jason dies, depending on how you looked at it. 

But there was no other way to look at this fact: Jason was alive and whole, still living happily with Bruce and Alfred. Still living. Still Robin. 

The fact weighed Tim down, a heavy stone in his stomach. He had ignored the feeling and continued on.

Current events aligned with what Tim could recall from his own timeline, so that checked out. Vicky Vale had recently written the same article on Bruce and Dick and Jason that Tim could remember pouring over with a want that had almost eaten him alive. He had it still, in one of the boxes under his bed. It was brand-new, on unblemished paper and still smelling like fresh ink. 

Those boxes had been the next thing Tim had combed through for clues, and they proved to be the most helpful in figuring out where he was. Tim had always been meticulous in his study of Batman and Robin. He kept his pictures in pristine condition, labeled and ordered by date. The news articles he collected were just as plenty, and just as neat.

The timelines matched. 

If de-aging hadn’t already been ruled out, it definitely was now. All that left was time travel, dimension travel, or a combination of both, all situations equally delicate. 

Everything seemed the same as what Tim had already experienced, but that could mean nothing if he was just in a similar dimension. And if it was time travel, how much was Tim simply being there already messing up the timeline? Had he inadvertently killed the consciousness of his thirteen year old self, overwritten that naïve kid with the Tim Drake of four years into the future?

He didn’t want to consider the fact that the time where he came from might already be null and void, a distant place he could never return to. And he needed to return back to his own time, back to where his family was. 

Things were still strained with them, with Bruce and Dick especially. Tim's position in the family was a tectonic plate that was slowly, imperceptibly shifting away, but that didn’t mean he wanted to stay in the past. A past where his parents were alive but ignored him, where he was an only child, where he wasn’t Robin, or even Red Robin. Where he was entirely and wholly alone. 

Besides, he was needed in the present, and if he was needed somewhere else, that meant he couldn’t stay.

Dimension travel or time travel, Tim didn’t think the difference mattered much in the long run. He still needed to figure out how he got here, and how to get back. The question was how. He had no memory of the event and getting outside help would change the timeline. 

Regardless, the idea of asking for assistance didn’t sit right with Tim. Last time someone had been lost in time, no one had believed him. This time, he had just as few reasons to be believed and even less people who would be inclined to believe him. Being thought as crazy once had been enough; Tim wasn’t inclined to repeat the situation. 

Was his family even looking for him? They had thought Bruce was dead last time. Would they be burying an empty coffin, mourning someone who wasn’t even dead? Or maybe they wouldn’t even notice his absence. He hadn’t seen them in weeks, after all. Only his consciousness had been shifted into the past. Who knew what was happening with Tim in the future-present?

Tim sighed and dug his knuckles into dry, bloodshot eyes. His head hurt, though he couldn’t tell if it was a lingering effect of the pain he had felt earlier, from the glow of his monitors in his dark bedroom, from the lack of sleep, or a combination of all three. 

He needed to stop overthinking and focus on the things he could actually do. He needed a good night’s sleep and for the lingering pain in his body to go away. He needed for his life to stop being a chaotic mess. Tim needed a lot of things, really. 

Instead, he kept on researching, kept on forming plan after plan, contingency upon contingency. Tim had work to do, and in the face of that, everything could wait. 

He ended up crashing not long after, but it didn’t matter because he had come to a decision. 

He would shadow the bats, just like he always had, make sure the timeline stayed in check. And if letting Jason die once more killed one of the last few bright parts of Tim, it was a sacrifice he would have to make. 

If everything went according to plan, no one would ever have to know of Tim's cowardice. 

It was an impossible situation: Tim could either change the timeline and possibly jeopardize the future, or keep things the same and let things play out as they already had once. Maybe, if Tim was lucky for once, he would be back home before he would have to choose. 

However, only one option guaranteed the lives of everyone else even if they went through hell to get there. When put in those terms, Tim knew what he had to do. It was almost simple.


	2. chapter two

The Batman and Robin of the past were the same ones that lived on a broken pedestal in Tim’s mind, Tim’s Batman and Robin, the two people he had once looked up to most. The same two people who had long since fallen in status to just that: people. 

He had once seen them through rose tinted glasses, all bright wide-eyed awe and wholehearted, fervent belief. Their images had been ingrained in his memory, imprinted on the rolls upon rolls of film in his camera. 

Tim could remember what they had been like the weeks before Jason’s death, the implosion of their relationship just before the explosion of Jason in that warehouse. What he hadn’t realized until now, seeing them again, was how similar their relationship was in the present compared to the tense thing they had going on in the past. 

Angry, spiteful words and sharp, pointed silences; clenched jaws, tense shoulders, and white-knuckled fists. Maybe if Tim hadn’t spent years watching Batman and Robin he wouldn’t have noticed a difference, but he had, and the differences from their past relationship and the similarities between their present one were stark. 

Tim had spent the majority of the day in bed, finally winding down enough to fall asleep in the early hours of the morning. He didn’t wake up until midday to a phone call from his school reporting his absence. 

School. That was a thing he would have to do again, Tim realized as he deleted the voicemail. Or not, he supposed. It wasn’t like his parents would notice. 

He had headed out a few hours later, locking the front door shut behind him as the sun set. He half felt he should be leaving in a suit, racing out of the cave in the batmobile, but he wasn’t Robin anymore, not even Red Robin. All he was right now was a kid with a camera and memories of a future that hadn’t yet come to existence. All he could do was chase the shadow of a man he had once or will soon fight beside. 

The lingering ache from yesterday had disappeared only for a new problem to present itself: Tim was used to being about four inches taller. He kept overbalancing and overshooting his height, clumsier than he ever had been at thirteen. 

Gotham was the same in every aspect except appearance, but Tim still found himself struggling to get around more than he had as a kid. Judging the distances between rooftops and ledges to cling onto proved to be dangerous. 

On top of that, all he had to rely on were the basic gymnastics and self-defense classes he had once taken. If he really wanted to get around, he’d have to build up his strength and agility from scratch, realign his mental memory with that of his muscles. 

However, luck was on Tim’s side for once. All things considered, it was a calm night, at least by Gotham standards. A few muggings, minimal gang activity, a drug deal gone wrong, and no rogues running the streets. It was almost peaceful. 

So of course, that was when things had to go wrong. 

The first time Tim had been fear gassed, he wasn’t even in the suit. He had been thirteen and trailing after Batman when they—because it wasn’t even Scarecrow, just some whackjob that had reverse engineered his toxin—had struck. 

It had been a quiet night, not long before Jason Todd died. Tim had forgotten the date, but as he ducked behind an air conditioning unit to watch the ensuing fight, the memory struck him with sudden, starling clarity. 

The fight played out like Tim remembered, blurry images in his mind superimposing themselves over what occurred in real time. Robin and Batman pulling rebreathers over their faces; the criminal releasing the valve on the small canister attached to his back. He couldn’t remember the man’s name, or even his face, but Tim was certain it was him. 

(He couldn’t picture his face even now, Tim didn’t think.)

The first time around, Tim had been too slow. He had sat huddled on the building where he was now until the sun came up, jumping out of his skin with fear and nonexistent pain. He could change things this time, but should he?

How much would not getting fear gassed change the timeline? How much would getting fear gassed affect things? Tim had the wrong memories, who knew what he would say or do if he were drugged?

As long as Batman and Robin didn’t take notice of Tim, he would be fine. He felt safe with those chances—they never had before. He was too good at staying unnoticed. Not getting fear gassed might change things, but it had less variables than his other options. 

The off-brand fear toxin had begun to spread to the next building over where Tim was, to the people on the street below. Tim kept his head low and shirt pulled over his nose, then took a flying leap off the building. 

Next to him, the building had a fire escape a few feet below the rooftops. It was rusted to hell, but it would suffice as a quick landing point

As Red Robin, Tim would have been able to make the jump with his eyes closed. As Red Robin stuck in his prepubescent body, he didn’t quite make it. 

Story of his life, really. Tim Drake: just never quite made it. 

His fingertips brushed the rail, a few centimeters short. Tim’s heart dropped about three storeys, much like how he currently was. A bitter curse left his lips as he fell. 

There wasn’t even enough room in the alley below to land correctly, no space to roll to minimize the impact. Tim wasn’t even sure if he would have anyway, not unless he wanted to accidentally shoot up with a discarded needle or turn into a disco ball of broken glass. 

A dumpster sat under the fire escape. The lid was on, of course. Landing in trash would have been unpleasant, but it would have been a lot softer than plastic. 

Tim hit the lid with a crash, his weight cracking it. His ankle jarred at the impact, breaking with an audible snap. He clenched his teeth against the pain, clutching his calf, more furious at himself than anything. He was better than this. Or should have been, at least. 

In the few seconds that Tim had been otherwise occupied, Batman and Robin must have taken down the wannabe Scarecrow, because they were now peering at Tim over the lip of the building he had jumped from.

“Hey, are you okay?” Robin shouted down, Batman an impassive shadow behind him. 

“Fuck,” Tim hissed, clumsily slipping off the dumpster. Something squelched beneath his shoe. 

“Wait, don’t go!” Robin grappled down to where Tim was at in one smooth swoop, Batman not far behind. 

Tim was already booking it, taking the corner at the mouth of the alley heedless of his most likely broken ankle. He could hear Robin run after him in pursuit until Batman spoke up. 

“Leave him,” Batman murmured. It was low enough that most people wouldn’t have heard him, but Tim wasn’t most people. He had been straining his ears to hear Batman for years, long enough that it was almost second nature. 

Tim could picture it: Batman, holding Robin back with a hand to his shoulder; Robin, seething, but reluctantly complying. Batman said something else, but by then Tim was too far to hear. 

He kept running despite the lack of pursuers, his heart thumping, breath ragged, and ankle throbbing, all in tandem. He couldn’t figure out why Batman and Robin would just ignore someone who was being as suspicious as Tim just was, why Batman—Batman!—would just let him go. 

Breathe, Tim told himself as he began to slow, adrenaline ebbing and pain spiking in his ankle. He replaced—whatever he had been feeling with anger.

Anger was easier. Anger at himself for slipping up; anger at the whole time travel situation and his lack of memory surrounding it; anger that he had broken his ankle in the most embarrassing way possible and now had to find a way to make up for it. 

But Tim would make up for it, always did. He had to. He couldn’t fail, not now. 

In the end, Tim made a stealth trip to Leslie Thompkins. 

After she had looked at him a little too closely and with a little too much concern, he had offered up a shrug and a short, ‘I fell’, which was technically the truth, but still seemed suspicious coming from some random kid in the middle of the night. 

But Leslie Thompkins wouldn’t turn away a kid in need. An hour later, Tim found himself with a bulky cast around his ankle and a slip of paper in his pocket that Leslie had given him ‘just in case’. 

He tossed it into the trash on his way out, then limped all the way back to his house. 

The next morning when Tim woke up, he decided against going to school. He’d dropped out of high school for a reason after all, and besides, showing up with a boot on his foot was probably more memorable than his absence would be. 

It would lead to too many questions, anyway. 

He spent the day combing through data more thoroughly than he had the previous night, writing down any events he could remember. It, surprisingly, wasn’t much. 

Tim prided himself on his mind, but this little leap through time just highlighted how little he actually knew. He couldn’t remember how he got here, the exact dates things occurred, or the name and face of the villain of the week. 

It was more unnerving than Tim wanted to admit, and yet there was an unspoken part of him that enjoyed it. The whole situation was a challenge, a puzzle to be solved. 

Broken things were meant to be fixed—it was a conviction that Tim couldn’t shake. He liked feeling useful, and he liked doing things with visible results. 

Piecing parts together until they made a cracked whole; sorting through tangled messes until they were straightened out; smoothing down things with sharp and jagged edges. It had everything Tim liked; resulted in everything Tim wanted.

But this time, there was no case to solve, no clues to string together, and no safety net if he failed. 

And with that knowledge dogging Tim’s heels, time, as it tended to do, passed. His days were empty and his nights were spent following Batman and Robin (on the ground now, hobbling around by foot), but nonetheless they seemed to fly by in an inexplicable haze. 

It was almost as if time hadn’t really passed at all, and like the disjointed scratch of a record, suddenly Tim found himself skipping to weeks ahead of where he last remembered being. 

That last night of what could almost be considered peace, Tim stayed in. 

It hadn’t been a conscious thought to do so, just as neither opening his browser and buying tickets for a round trip to Ethiopia had been. At that point, it was instinct, or perhaps some higher power puppeteering his body because it sure as hell didn’t feel like Tim. 

All Tim knew was that he had to see this through. He needed to see his decisions come to fruition. But was it reassurance or retribution?

There was no plan after this, he realized, because after letting Jason die, Tim wasn’t sure how he could ever present himself to Batman and force himself into the space left by his dead son when he now had a part in making that space. He didn’t know how to get back to his own time, didn’t know how to live letting his life be dictated by the scant events he remembered. He didn’t know anything and it was fucking killing him. 

Getting himself out of the situation on his own seemed like a pipe dream at that point. Tim would need outside help, but how could he rely on that when he had no idea if anyone even noticed he was gone? He was in his past, yet somehow the present he was living was still an uncertainty. 

For a moment, Tim let himself wish for company—for Dick’s bright determination; for Steph’s frenetic energy; for Cass’s quiet grit. For Bruce. 

But however much Tim wanted company, he resented it and the help it always led to in equal measures. Bitter pride and heated stubbornness had always warred for the desperate, aching need for validation and attention, so tangled they sometimes seemed like the same thing. To separate the feelings would be to tear open scar tissue already healed, an altogether pointless endeavor. 

Independence had been gifted to Tim at a young age, something he had grown to appreciate. He liked working alone, handling his problems himself, but he wasn’t sure if it was a thing he clung to for control or a strangling noose he had tied around his own neck. 

It sure felt like he couldn’t breathe sometimes. 

He couldn’t breathe, Tim suddenly thought, drawn back into the present as the confirmation for his plane ticket lit up the screen. His hand twitched around the computer mouse, fingertips cold and buzzing, not quite numb. Tim blinked against the glow of the monitor in his dark room, clenched his jaw. 

Everything felt tight: the constricting of his throat which left only a small pathway for air; his muscles tensed up in the way Bruce had always chided Tim for; the room all too quickly too small and familiar. 

This is exactly what Tim had wanted, yet everything he feared. 

Tomorrow, if things went well, Jason Todd would be dead, and Tim had no idea how to deal with that fact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow a new (short) chapter one month later go me i love time management <3 i also finally replied to all the comments omg i was not expecting any so i just wanted to say thanks for reading it means a lot to me !! sorry there hasn't been much action or even character interaction but next chapter should be interesting :) lmk if there's any errors bc ya girl did not edit this ! and to end things off roast me in the comments if anyones (tim's) characterization is off bc i think i've been a little too influenced by fanon (tim) lmao and idk how to write (tim). at least i know how to write long ass author's notes :')


	3. chapter three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not me realizing its been another month since i updated and writing a whole chapter in a day without any editing :) i'm not very happy with it so there'll probably be a little bit of revision later but i decided to post it regardless
> 
> anyway this is the chapter yall have been waiting for hopefully its up to par !! also peep the unreliable narrator tag bc while it has appeared a little before it fr comes into play now
> 
> cw for joker typical everything and the canon typical violence of jason's death

Every time Tim looked at Jason, all he could see was some kid he was sentencing to death.

This Jason was too different from the person who had tried to kill him, too different even from the man whom Tim placed his hesitant trust in in the present. He had forgotten that Jason had once been like this, though he could still see the vague outlines of it in the Red Hood.

As of now, Jason Todd was just a kid, one who Tim would be letting die. At that point, the Joker was nothing more than the murder weapon and Tim the hand that weld it. An accomplice.

Tim was older than Jason, he realized as he boarded the plane to Ethiopia. He was almost closer to Dick’s age than anyone else’s, and how weird was that to think about, now that he was condemning his younger older not-quite brother to a temporary grave. 

The morning came like most in Gotham, with no sunrise, just the subtle shifting of shadows and the steady fading of darkness until the black night gradually turned into the gray daylight. 

Hours later, Tim found himself staring down at that gray sky and the gray skyline that accompanied it from an airplane, eyes fixed on the window and not the dark head a few rows up. 

He tried not to think too much about things, and instead wondered if his absence contingencies had been triggered by his little jaunt through time, and on second thought, that wasn’t a pleasant thing to dwell on either. 

There was a kid sitting alone next to him, kicking his feet and craning his head as he peered up the aisle. He looked oddly familiar, dark hair and blue eyes. Tim couldn’t judge his age very well, but he was definitely too young to be on a plane by himself. 

Tim turned back to the window as the kid glanced over at him, eyes meeting for the barest hint of a second. He stayed that way as the plane took off and his stomach swooped, a combination of the change in altitude and nerves. 

When they had finally taken off, plane skimming the smog and pollution of Gotham, the kid turned to him and spoke. He had the uncanny eyes of a person much older than he seemed, ones that saw through Tim as if he were transparent.

“You don’t want to be here, do you?” he said solemnly. 

Tim blinked, suddenly at a loss. He didn’t have much experience with children as Tim Drake, but he didn’t think kids usually acted like this. 

“I’m sorry, what?” Tim knew he hadn’t heard him wrong, but he almost wished he had. 

“You’re afraid,” the kid said instead. “I can tell.”

“What’s there to be afraid of?” Tim replied, trying to smile and failing. Too many things. 

“Too many things.” Tim felt oddly exposed. It was like this kid had cracked open his brain and was picking through his thoughts, carefully sorting through everything until he found the things that Tim tried to hide the most. 

The plane shook with turbulence. Tim shifted his gaze from the boy next to him back to Jason. He was stiffly sat in his seat, hands white-knuckling the arm rests of his seat. This was probably his first—and last—time on a regular airplane. 

Tim couldn’t help himself, equal parts curious and humoring the kid. He turned back to the boy, unable to weather his eyes boring into him. “Like what?”

“Like messing things up beyond repair. Knowing that no one’s coming for you. Realizing all your efforts are futile. Disappointing everyone. There’s more, too. That’s only the stuff you're willing to admit to yourself.” 

There was no malice to the words. There should be, Tim couldn’t help but think. How could you see a knife in someone’s chest and twist it with no ill intent? 

He shouldn’t have been so affected by the words of a child half his age, but he was. There was a difference between knowing something and having to hear it be acknowledged by someone else, the same difference between seeing a wound and rubbing salt into it. 

Tim’s mouth was dry when he replied, but he managed to keep his affected light tone. “Where are your parents?”

“Where are yours?” the child returned. Tim clenched his jaw, suddenly angry. “We’re the same, Tim. I know you better than you know yourself.” 

Tim didn’t reply. He didn’t think he could, or everything he left unsaid would spill past his lips. He didn’t even know what would come out, but it lingered on the tip of his tongue like poison. 

“We both know what’s coming, so why don’t you do something about it? Why are you so determined to do things yourself? You’re not alone and you never have been, so why do you act as if you are?” 

It was the only guarantee of a somewhat happy ending. His knowledge would be useless if he changed things past recognizability. Creating a new timeline jeopardized any chance of getting home. There were infinite reasons Tim could supply, but he didn’t. 

“I don’t know,” he said, quiet. Tim felt brittle enough to break into a million little pieces. One more push and he might.

“Don’t lie. We’re the same, remember? There’s no point in hiding.”

Life became a stop motion film after that, events splicing into quick frames of action every time Tim closed his eyes. 

He blinked, and he was leaving the plane. His hands were empty, because he hadn’t brought any carry-on. He almost wished he had something to hold onto, some immaterial thing to ground him. 

He blinked again, and was under an endless blue sky. He wondered if Jason’s head was tipped up to let the sun wash over him, if he shivered under its heat like Tim had. This would be the first and last time Jason would ever see a sky untarnished by Gotham. Ethiopia was a place of many firsts and lasts for Jason.

He blinked one final time, and found himself in a warehouse. The warehouse. It was smaller than Tim would have expected, run down, warm and stuffy. Sweat trickled down Tim’s neck, beaded above his lip. 

Crates were stacked to the ceiling in neat rows, but there was a space in the middle made for what was to happen next. It was here that Jason would die, and here that Tim would watch. 

Except this wasn’t going how Tim expected it to. Sheila handed Jason over and then sat to watch the show. How had no one ever known this? Sheila Haywood was buried next to Jason, and yet she was the one who had dug his grave. How had no one ever realized that she had handed over her son?

Something cracked inside Tim. His resolve, maybe. He didn’t know. 

What he did know, was that it was just Robin and the Joker now, and the two bystanders that would do nothing. Sheila Haywood, mother and betrayer. Tim Drake, brother and replacement. And Jason Todd, son and betrayed, brother and replaced. It would a lonely way to die.

“This is going to hurt you a lot more than it does me,” the Joker said, laughing. “Forehand or backhand,” the Joker said, swinging a glinting crowbar through the air. “A or B,” the Joker said, enjoying every second of beating Robin to the ground. 

Tim didn’t want to watch. He wanted to blink and let the scene shift; close his eyes and block everything out as if he were a child again, pulling a blanket over his head to protect himself from monsters. 

But he didn’t, couldn’t. The Joker was the type of monster that could not be ignored, and Tim didn’t deserve that ignorance anyway. Not when he had caused this. 

He had read the reports after becoming Robin. 

Tim knew that based on some of his injuries, Jason had fought. That he had not let the Joker truly win, not let him fully break his spirit.

Yet none of the reports ever mentioned how Jason had screamed. How he called and called and called for Batman, for Bruce. For Dad. 

(Another first and last for Jason Todd.)

It took a long time for Jason to fall silent. Tim couldn’t tell if he was unconscious, or if he had just given up on any help. 

Tim had been referring to Jason as Robin, but wasn’t he Robin too? And wasn’t Robin supposed to help? That thing, that feeling, inside Tim—it cracked again. 

“A bit messy,” the Joker remarked, shaking out the bloodied, dented crowbar in his hands as he studied the bloodbath before him. A bit messy. That’s all the Joker had to say about what he had done. 

This time, when Tim blinked, the scene in front of him changed. Sheila and Jason, locked inside the warehouse with a ticking time bomb that would—is going to—inevitably kill them. 

(Tim, also inside. He should have been gone by then, because there was no way out now.)

Jason was awake and alert by then, but only barely. He was holding himself together by the tips of his fingers, grasping onto a consciousness that was quickly slipping through his hands. 

Still, he managed to untie himself with his broken fingers; was able to drag his dead weight the few feet to the locked doors of the warehouse. He didn’t cry or beg in the face of death, didn’t accept it for what it was with resignation. Jason, like he always did, fought. 

There was less than a minute on the timer, and everything Tim had been holding back crumbled to pieces in the wake of it. Nothing mattered, then, except being there, saving Jason. He stood on shaking legs and ran. His broken ankle throbbed and the cast slowed him down, but Tim didn’t think he had ever run faster. 

“B?” Jason murmured as Tim neared. He must be really out of it if he could ever believe a prepubescent Tim was Batman. 

“Yeah,” Tim agreed softly, beginning to work futilely on the heavy chains at the door. “It’s me, Jay.” It made his chest ache to lie like this, but Tim didn’t know what else to do, how to make this easier. He regretted every choice that led him to this point with a visceral pain. 

Relief washed over Jason, his body slackening. There was no need for him to keep fighting when there was someone else to fight for him. “You came,” he said wondrously. He sounded so young. “I knew you would come.”

But Bruce hadn’t come, and he would never come. He would choose the greater good over his son, and Jason would die alone in a warehouse thousands of miles away from the Manor and only minutes away from home. 

“Of course I came,” Tim said, voice creaking under the weight of Jason’s wholehearted belief. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

“It’s okay,” Jason whispered. He seemed to be slowly retreating into himself as the adrenalin faded. “You’re here. When can we leave?”

Tim looked at the timer. There were only seconds left. He knew he was too late to save anyone. He hadn’t brought anything with him, had no contingencies for once. This was supposed to be it. “Soon,” he told Jason, giving up on the locks. 

Jason, at least, would get a second chance at life. Tim wasn’t sure about himself. Maybe he wouldn’t die. It wasn’t the explosion that had killed Robin, after all. 

Tim had read the reports. 

Jason had died from suffocation. He had lived through his torture at the hands of the Joker, lived through the bomb in the warehouse. It had been the rubble compressing his battered body and the smoke invading his lungs that had finally done what nothing else had been able to. 

If Bruce hadn’t been late, Jason would have lived. If Bruce had been a minute earlier, there would be no Red Hood and no third Robin until Damian. No before and after in the form of a death shaped day that cleaved everyone’s lives in two. It wasn't blame, it just was.

It had been foolish of Tim to wait so long to fix things and arrogant of him to think he could do so with so little time. 

Time. It was funny, how much time had screwed things over for Tim recently. When the timer hit zero, Tim almost wanted to laugh. 

The bomb went off before Tim could make any preparations against it, and it was like the sun had come down to the Earth. It was blinding, that white light and the burning heat, and it brought the whole warehouse on top of them.

It was instinct to cover Jason, to take the brunt of the collapse. A piece of metal from the rafters forced itself through Tim’s shoulder and a cry of pain tore out from his throat. 

Jason, still clinging stubbornly to consciousness, grabbed hold of him weakly. Tim almost wished he wasn’t awake so he wouldn’t have to see this, wouldn’t have to feel himself die. 

If he was unconscious, dying would be just like falling asleep. Instead, they would both have to lay there, bloody and broken, and wait to choke on their last breaths. 

Tim wanted to at least reassure Jason, but he couldn’t get the words out. 

When he had first started out as Robin, Tim had gotten trapped beneath a building. It hadn’t been for long, and barely even ranked in the top twenty of worst things to have happened to him, but the event had sent Bruce into a frenzy. 

He wasn’t sure why he was remembering it now, other than how he couldn’t stop wishing for this day to end the same way that one had: with Tim drinking hot chocolate in the Manor with Bruce and Dick and Alfred at his side. 

Things were beginning to grow dark. If that explosion had been the sun, then this broken warehouse was the moon eclipsing it. Pockets of sunlight seeped through the cracks in the debris, but Tim couldn’t see the sun anymore. 

If this were Gotham, there wouldn’t have been any sun to see altogether. It would have already been like the world was coated in ash, pollution and smog instead of dust and smoke and ruin. 

Tim was starting to suspect that it wasn’t the sun that was leaving, but his vision. Breathing was becoming more and more of a struggle as the weight of the warehouse bore onto him and his lungs became as polluted as the gray Gotham sky. 

And Tim couldn’t stop thinking about that night with the building collapse. He couldn’t stop thinking about how Bruce had pulled him out, his broad, familiar figure lit from behind. 

His last thoughts, however, were about Jason, because as Tim’s lungs filled with ash and his vision began to grow dark, he couldn’t help but wonder if Jason was dreaming of home too.

**Author's Note:**

> okay a few things:   
> 1\. title of the fic is from a lot's gonna change by weyes blood  
> 2\. this is my first batfamily fic (and first in general lmao) so i'm a little bit shaky on characterization n all that + i have never touched a batman comic so if the timeline is fucked that's why. in this house we do not see canon   
> 3\. i tried to edit this as much as i could but if yall see some typos lmk  
> 4\. feedback and constructive crit is very much appreciated even if you just want to say u thought this fucking sucked  
> 5\. and to round this long ass list up to an even five, thank u for reading !


End file.
